Messages of Healing
by Toyu
Summary: The most hopeful of messages are sent in the dark.


Reiji finds himself sending messages to Eren's phone despite knowing that she won't be able to respond, a new-found old habit of his from his days in Japan high school where his own friends would constantly send him messages until he replied. _It's not as if she is receiving them…_ he thinks painfully as he presses the 'send' button on his newly-repaired flip phone.

* * *

Eren received her first one during a simple one target, 400 ft distance sniping mission, as her body still required some more time than the six months it has had to fully heal before she would be able to take on more difficult hit and runs, and other closer-ranged sniping missions. She fires with the butt of the modified Remington resting against her uninjured shoulder; the target goes down, then as she is awaiting the confirmation from Master, her phone rings. She takes it out of her pocket, wincing momentarily as her injured shoulder throbs at the slight movement that her other shoulder needed to retrieve the flip phone. Ein flips open the screen, wondering why Master would be calling her instead of saying his usual "Mission complete" over the headset. The text, - not call - her flip phone had received is not from Scythe but from Reiji.

 **From: Zewi. Time: Sent just now.**

 **Message:**

 **I'm sorry, for killing you on the docks six months ago today. I hope you get this message, wherever you spirit may rest, Eren.**

Her hand hovers over the button that reads "reply?" _Ignore it, focus on the mission._ She reorients herself as she closes the phone with a snap that harshly echoes in the silence that follows.

Later that night she stays up, long after she should be asleep after her daily recuperative movement therapy in the afternoon and mornings when the missions would allow it. Her eyesight blurs a bit as she rereads the message that she has memorized by rout. _It's nothing more than a mission missive… nothing more and nothing less._ She thinks to herself as she closes the phone lid and carefully lies down on her back, the wound in her side and shoulder momentary aching in protest to the slow and gentle movement. _The pain I feel now is nothing compared to that time._ she thinks a memory of burning pain in her side where the wound was, the feel of a knife entering her to remove the bullet that kept the wound open. For now she felt nothing more than the feeling of loneliness and a gaping empty hole around her chest where her heart had once been. Her eyes close against unshed tears as her master's shadow falls across the open doorway, knowing fully well that his imperfect Ein was still awake when she should be asleep. Steadily he walks towards the bed and slides the phone from under her unreseistive fingers, and flips it open.

After a moment or two have passed, Scythe grins and calmly says "How amusing…" as he tosses the phone back onto the bed. "Do whatever you want, Ein." Eren felt as if another bullet was entering her heart, for her master's orders meant _Do nothing. Do not reply. Await further orders._ Less than an hour latter her phone vibrates again as she stays awake staring up at the slowly turning ceiling fan above the bed. It's the second of many more messages to come, to all of which she would create replies to and then save to her draft folder, in accordance to her master's orders while still answering them.

* * *

Several months after the night when Zewi, now Reiji Azuma had shot her through the heart, she stares at her phone screen once again but with a different purpose. Eren turns her head towards the sleeping Reiji in the bed next to hers, the open window of the American-Mexico border town the two were staying at full of moonlight.

She erases the cluttered draft folder that held all the messages that she had created but never sent in replies to Reiji's own. Eren then erases the remaining messages – all saved and from Reiji - on it, and then just for good measure, she erases all traceable data from the phone. No messages from the person who mattered the most to Eren were sent to her phone from that day onward, and even if they had, they would have gone unanswered.


End file.
